Spastic Colons and Dickheads and Random Subliminal Sightings of Britney.

Now children, before you get on your high horses I want you to know that the Spastic Colon we are going to discuss today is not the same Spastic Colon that has been staying with your mother-in-law for the last year and a half. If it were I would obviously agree to substantiate any findings by seeking out some sort of verification from at least two reputable institutions of higher learning, such as Wikipedia and any randomly chosen wall of Facebook, especially any celebrity whose first name begins with the letter ‘B’. Britney, for example.

But before we go any further, I have an admission to make. It seems that for any one person who actually checks out my blog (please note I did not say ‘reads’ by blog, because then I would be in trouble), at least twenty million people investigate anything in which even the name ‘Britney’ is mentioned. Ergo, ‘Britney’ ‘Britney’ ‘Britney’ Britney ‘Britney’. That should do it! By my reckoning at least one billion people should have checked out my blog within the last fifteen seconds. Of course, if they have the site has probably crashed, in which case my hosts will have kicked me off for fucking up their weekend and forcing them to come in and untangle the mess. ‘Britney’. Mind you, if they do kick me off, some wonderfully concerned citizen will immediately start a few hundred Facebook pages urging my hosts to reinstate me. I know I am not big news like ‘Britney’, but I reckon if I can drum up one million signatures from each one of my three hundred new Facebook fan pages, I should not only be welcomed back but I should be given a free upgrade and have my blog mentioned on their front page. ‘Britney’. I mean if some woman who witters on about the joy of being a real woman and who celebrates her real womaness by eating three dozen butterscotch crullers from Dunkin Donuts achieves Blog notoriety, why can’t I? I realise I am not overweight and don’t look like Prunella the Elephant Seal, and I realise I discriminate against all the fat people in the US and Britain by actually taking care of myself and watching what I eat. ‘Britney’. Yes, I know I shall be taken to task by Mr. Murdoch’s minions for eating fresh salads instead of skarfing twenty-five supersized ‘Happy Meals’ during my lunch break and limiting my intake to ten million calories per day – real woman calories, of course, of the kind real women find at the cakes and cookies sections at Walmart and Asda. ‘Britney’. And while I’m at it (as they say, “in for a penny, in for a pound”) why is it that so many columnists continually whinge about the size of supermodels and claim that they are the evil conspiracy behind every ailment known to man? ‘Britney’. Well, at least every ailment known to young girls. Interestingly enough these selfsame columnists – who after all supposedly work in publishing – don’t seem to be aware that for every ten girls that suffer from anorexia, about fifty thousand million cannot even squeeze through the door of their mummy’s car. ‘Britney’. Of course, I do realise the onus is on the automobile-makers for not designing their new cars the size and shape of blimps. Speaking of which, that selfish short-sightedness might be the reason so many American car manufactures are going belly-up. ‘Britney’. The good ol’ American consumer simply can’t be shoehorned into their new models! As I like to say, “Where is the Edsel when we need it!” But back to the columnists. It goes without saying that most of them nevertarget the ‘celebrity’ magazines, whose main business is to publish candid photographs of ‘celebrities’ when they’ve gained a pound or two and have two hundred inches of cottage cheese bulging from their thongs. ‘Britney’. But – silly me – they can’t can they? After all, they cannot attack the ‘celebrity’ magazines because the ‘celebrity’ magazines are also owned by the same corporation that publishes the columnists other columns, plus the fact that the columnists also write a column for the ‘celebrity’ magazines themselves. ‘Britney’. But never mind, it all works out in the end, for the same publishers also own the fashion magazines, the ones that use the very same photographs, only shrinking the celebrity’s body to a US size zero and giving the celebrity a face and a body and a blow-job expression such as only a electrically charged sixteen year old can actually manage in the flesh. And then the poor ‘celebrity’, who is well over thirty and has had seventeen children and boobs hanging down to her knees, has got to live up to the fashion spreads. ‘Britney’. Because, you see, her entire career is based on her red-carpet appearances, which means she can no longer work at her chosen profession but has to endure weekly encounters with her plastic surgeon and her dermatologist, as well as spend ten hours per day working out in the gym – before returning home and embalming herself with tanning solvents and wrapping herself in plastic baggies for the night. ‘Britney’. And no, I won’t tell you which pop singer I’m talking about. But it’s not ‘Britney’. Or perhaps I will. Then maybe she’ll sue me and then at least a few people – namely readers of the Sun the News of the World – shall have heard of me. They still won’t read my blog, but they will have heard of me, which means I shall be asked to appear in next year’s edition of Strictly Come Dancing. Or as you tossers on the other side of the pond call it, ‘Britney’. Also known as Dancing with the Stars. Which reminds me, why hasn’t Britney herself been asked to appear on that particular slugfest of humiliation. Then they could really attract the punters by calling it Britney’s Dancing with the Stars Starring ‘Britney’.

And once that happens, my hosts will have to give my blog a mention in their Home Page. ‘Britney’

But where was I? Oh, yes: ‘Britney’. Or as I should say (being the desperately unemployable huckster that I am), ‘Britney’ ‘Britney’ Britney’ ‘Britney’ ‘Britney’. There, that should pay my rent for the next ten or twenty years. And in case any shyster lawyer decides to sue me for defaming the character of any one particular ‘Britney’ or for earning a few thousand days’ wages freeloading on the back of any one of the many random Britneys there seem to be so many of, I say this: ‘Britney’. If you are going to sue me for using the name ‘Britney’ in order for your law office to earn enough money to replace the money that was invested in your clients’ trust finds and which you stole (I’m sorry, did I say ‘stole’? I meant ‘borrowed’), doesn’t that mean you will have to sue every single parent that ever stuck one of their own little blond brat daughters with the name ‘Britney’? It reminds me of the time – way back when his comb-over was new and when he had hadn’t yet managed to re-name Manhattan after himself. ‘Britney’. Did I say ‘Britney’? I meant ‘Trumphattan’, didn’t I, which you have to admit is sorta catchy, innit? Anyway, it seems the comb-over tried to sue some poor schmuck whose family name was actually Comb-Over for daring to use the comb-over’s name, even though – being far older than the comb-over – the greedy Comb-Over who was being sued was – according to papers filed by the comb-over – preventing the comb-over from tearing down Comb-Over’s his third-floor cold-water walk-up and building a golf resort. ‘Britney’. Or perhaps it was for having a full head of hair of his own, which – come to think of it – was both highly insulting to ‘The Donald’ and even downright discriminatory). ‘Comb-over’. I mean, ‘Britney’. And doesn’t this also remind one of the time (again, back when the earth was new and the comb-over didn’t dye his ‘come-over’) when ‘McDonalds’ went after a small Scottish eatery for calling itself ‘McNibbles’ or something like that? Apparently ‘McDonalds’ was not aware that every man-jack in Scotland is a ‘Mc’ or a ‘Mac’ – after all, ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ (which are one and the same thing) does mean ‘son of’, as in McBritney – but I guess they hadn’t heard the news in whatever middle-western Smallville spawned the original ‘Croc’. I also seem to remember that Scotland, as a country, was not overly impressed with McDonald’s shenanigans and that the Chief of the Clan MacDonald presented some sort of legal challenge to ‘McDonalds’ in which it was pointed out that he and he alone was the only person on the planet who was entitled to call himself ‘Britney’. I mean, ‘The MacDonald’ (a fact that might have inspired ‘The Donald’ to try to buy every speck of oceanfront property on all the coasts and islands of Scotland just so he could sue ‘The MacDonald’ for daring to include the ‘Donald’ part of his name without first having a golf resort built on top of his head. Next thing you know, Scotland will be renamed ‘Trumpland’ – or as I prefer to call it, ‘Comb-Over Land’ and ‘The MacDonald’ will be reduced to calling himself ‘The Mac’. ‘Britney’. And this will, of course, lead to yet another suit by McDonald’s claiming copyright infringement and even for trying to tarnish McDonald’s good name – which, come to think of it, is what the Campbells have been trying to do for centuries. ‘Britney’. After all, since Scotland is the official deep-fried nation of the world, what with deep-fried pizzas and deep-fried Mars Bars and Deep-fried kabobs and the Deep-Friend ‘Tartan Army’ and Deep-Fried Skull-Splitter, McDonalds certainly did not want to lose out on their best potential super-sizing market in the world. Next to Southern Louisiana, of course. Don’t you find all this legal manoeuvring exhausting? Don’t you find ‘Britney’ exhausting?

But, as I said before, all those things happened a long time ago when people were still able to fit into the seats at Wimbledon; before they had to tear down the old centre court and build seats big enough for Jumbo the Elephant. ‘Britney’. And this reminds me, what plonker decided that after over a century of enjoying the ever-present risk of deluges and flooding at the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament – which after all had been one of the oldest and most treasured traditions in all of tennis, and one right up there with ‘strawberries and cream’ and calling female contestants ‘Miss’ – did they suddenly decide they had to install a roof? Was it for ‘Britney’? Why? Did some consultant or other employ a focus group in Sheboygan and determine that Her Majesty’s subjects were suddenly afraid of getting wet? Why is it that everything is getting so bloody Americanised? Even ‘Britney’. And why doesn’t anybody ever say ‘NO’. I mean, the last time anyone in Britain actually said ‘NO’ to the US, was when Harold Wilson said ‘NO’ to Britain’s becoming involved in Vietnam. I mean, is America so small it doesn’t have enough people in its own country to make better Americans? Do they have to pick on everybody else? Or are they still afraid Britain is going to charge interest on the tea tax they got into such a huff about? ‘Britney’.

Of course, it goes without saying that America knows how to be patient and bide its time. After all, they were willing to wait two-hundred years for ‘Britney’, weren’t they? And I guess in the end the wait was worth it, for when they really needed a really good ‘YES-MAN’, good Ol’ Tony Blair flashed his teeth, rolled over exposing his stomach, and said, “Britney!”

Now I was just about to launch an attack on the current propensity of penniless American billionaires to buy Premier League Football Clubs. I suppose, it’s only natural; after all, they can’t really buy one their own ‘soccer’ clubs, can they, seeing as how most of their clubs have fan bases of less than twenty-five people. And by that, I mean the same twenty-five people that charter Greyhound buses in order to sit in front of the television cameras at each match of each and every team during the season to make appear that ‘Britney’ really is a popular sport – and not just an extra-curricular activity for the sons and daughters of moms driving SUVs. ‘Britney’. And if it weren’t for the die-hard loyalty of these twenty-five fans, the poor players would never have anybody who actually knew they existed. ‘Britney’. Of course, they could rename their own version of the sport ‘Britney’ and invite Janet Jackson to perform at all the matches, but nobody ever seems to think of really practical solutions, do they?

But anyway, since the Latin American and Spanish and French teams seem to be quite happy the way they are, that leaves only the good Ol’ Special Friendship to open the doors and grease the wheels of commerce. ‘Britney’. And so, the chequebook comes out, the contracts are signed, and then comes the moments when the fun begins. No, not Janet Jackson performing at half-time. And not even ‘Britney. What actually happens is this: no sooner have the contracts been signed that – OOPS! – there is no money in the bank to honour the cheque. But never mind, there is always the other way. And so, as per usual, the British roll over and say ‘YES’. And the clubs – rather than being bought with real money – somehow end up having to buy themselves on behalf of the new owners, and then of course they have to repay the owners for the money the owners didn’t spend, plus the interest on all the debt accrued when the clubs had to borrow the money to buy themselves on behalf of the owners. ‘Britney’. And since by now the clubs don’t have any more money to pay for decent players and the clubs start to lose games, the fans decide to raise their own money to pay off the deadbeat owners and hopefully force them to leave the country and to go back home and ruin their own sporting franchises. But then a strange thing happens. ‘Britney’. By this time the owners are universally despised by every player and by every employee and by every fan, but they suddenly decide they are not going to sell. And they take photographs of themselves standing next to the models of the new stadiums they had promised to build. Which, of course, were never built for the simple reason that all the team’s hard-earned money had gone to pay off the debt they didn’t have before the new American owners bought them. ‘Britney’. But I had promised not to bring this up, and so I won’t. Which means I am a liar, which means I might have a future as a penniless American billionaire. Perhaps I will buy ‘Britney’.

I have this feeling that when the new American owners of one particular unnamed Premier League Football Club had the club buy its self on behalf of the themselves (‘themselves’ being the new American owners), they might have been trying to take a leaf out of their own history. ‘Britney’. You known the leaf I mean: when a certain alleged Florida Major League Baseball team was allegedly owned by these same alleged owners long before they were the new alleged American owners of the alleged Premier League Football Club? I’m sure you your remember. This was the alleged team that happened to allegedly win the alleged World Series of ‘Britney’. Of course, having reached the pinnacle of American Baseballdom, the alleged owners apparently realised the only way the alleged team was allegedly going to go was down. And so what they did was to get allegedly get rid of all the allegedly expensive players so they could allegedly destroy the alleged team before it could destroy itself. ‘Britney’. And it worked! So, I really suspect that they thought it was high-time they tested this alleged formula again. But of course, they reckoned without the good old British unions (who know how to say ‘NO’ and mean it – without even once using the words ‘alleged’ or ‘allegedly’). ‘Britney’. Very possibly, these new American owners had been informed that during the eighties, Margaret Thatcher had destroyed the unions. Well, let’s put it this way: Margaret Thatcher is gone but the unions are not. ‘Britney’. And neither are the good old British fans, who are gloriously and rampantly un-politically correct.

However, at this point in time I’ll wager that the new American owners are kicking themselves that they didn’t wait to have the Premier League Football Club buy themselves until after a whole new door was allegedly opened by a certain world-devouring food conglomerate called ‘Britney’. Or do I mean Tyrannosaurus Rex? ‘Britney’. Or was it ‘Kraft’? Do you remember them? They are the ones who – only last year – bought Cadbury’s Chocolates with a cast-iron promise not to lay off British workers at the UK-based Cadbury’s factories. ‘Britney’. Except, of course, the day after the deal had been signed, they reneged on the promise and sacked everybody. And only did they do that, but the head of Kraft, who earns a seven figure annual salary, refused to appear before parliament to explain her actions. And now, Cadbury’s Chocolate, that great old British institution founded by a sweet old Quaker gentleman, makes its products from the most cost-effective dirt possible in whatever is currently the cheapest country. And no, it is not ‘Britney’.

But never mind. All I really want out of life – besides a really great blow-job – is for at least one person to allegedly read my alleged blog and to hate me enough to allegedly sue me. ‘Britney’. But, it goes without saying this will never happen, and nobody will ever leave the sort of libellous comments on my page that will encourage my hosts to put me on their home page. Right next to the Real Woman who is exalting over the pleasures of being a Real Woman whilst eating the entire inventory of Dunkin Donuts. ‘Britney’. Which reminds me: as I’ve said before we all have our weight and fitness issues. However in the case of this particular real-woman in Dunkin Donuts, mightn’t she one day regret bragging on her blog about her full-figured, real-woman’s body and about how she achieved satisfaction from eating her way through the sourdough crullers with the chocolate sprinkles? Or was it from the orgasm she was given in exchange for a coupon by the high school kid in charge of the sprinkles? ‘Britney’. After all, health is heath. And if you abuse your health, somewhere down the line someone might well have to pay the price for such a wonderful real-woman’s inconveniences such as strokes or diabetes. From my own experience, insurers are not overly-endowed with senses of humour, and they also know how to say ‘NO’. Like ‘Britney’. And since insurance companies are usually multi-national companies and not British, when they say ‘NO’ they actually mean ‘NO’. And so what is the real woman who’s had a stroke and is in danger of losing her feet through diabetes going to do? I mean, with her special wheelchair and oxygen tank she’ll never again fit through the door of Dunkin Donuts, will she? ‘Britney’.

But what – I hear you ask – does all this have to do with Spastic Colons? Besides giving me a chance to write ‘Britney’ a hundred or more times in order to builder up my readership? Nothing really. Mind you, it would make a rather nice name for your first-born son or for the detective of a new series of mysteries. ‘Britney’. NO, not ‘Britney’, ‘Spastic Colon’. Say it out loud and savour the sound. ‘Spastic Colon’. ‘Britney’. Spasdickus Colonicus. ‘Britney’. Spaz Clon. ‘Britney’. Noloc Cirsaps. ‘Britney’. ‘Britney’s Colon’. ‘Britney’s Colonic Irrigation System’. Which is, by the way, my suggestion for the title track of her next album. For as you may have noticed, nothing is too good for Britney.

Not even Britney. Cuz I wuv her and want to bear her childwen. Sorry, Dunkin-Donut real-woman lady, ‘Britney’ got here first.

I love armpits! Quite simply, the armpits are the windows to the soul. Not the eyes; after all, what are eyes but two little globs of jelly curtained from above and below by fringes of wispy fringes called lashes. And the lashes are never compatible with the eyes themselves! And part of this is because the eyes themselves are so randomly coloured. And the colour charts from which the shades are chosen are so limited. Why, they don’t even embrace all the colours of the rainbow. Nor do they include such vibrant hybrids as magenta or mustard yellow or orange or Ferrari red. And forget about zebra stripes or leopard spots or flashing neon lights or polka dots or panthers peering from round the irises. Of course, some of these effects are possible with the aid of contact lenses; and in photographs one can always cheat and resort to computer imaging and photo-shop and even to cutting and pasting more interesting eyes into the slots formerly occupied by your own boring greyish blue jelly globs – in other words, the very eyes you have been trying to pass off as ‘baby blues’. But that is not the same, is it. And it doesn’t even work, for the minute someone sees you in the flesh they notice how boring your face actually looks. In fact, faced with the real non-existent colour of your eyes, they can’t even find your face in order to look into it. And so then and there you lose your evening’s entertainment.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you always wear the colours that supposedly enhance your eyes, at least they will notice the vividness of your shirt. But, on the other hand, such a technique does limit your choice of wardrobe. For example, my eyes are your basic, washed-out greyish blue. They are, in fact the original invisible eyes. If I am willing to wear certain darkish bright blue shirts – the ones I loathe because they make me feel as though I am trying to pass myself off as a banker – you can almost see that I really do have eyes. That is, if the light is right and I am drunk enough that my eyes are lined with red. And as for mascara and eye-liner, don’t kid yourself. The only time they work is if you’ve got amazing eyes to begin with. Otherwise you look like Bozo the Clown.

No one with eyes like mine could ever be a Latin lover or a Corsican bandit or a Sheikh or – for that matter – a movie heart-throb. Latin lovers, by definition, cannot be invisible. They must have flashing eyes. The same with Corsican bandits, and even more so with the sort of desert Sheikh played by Rudolf Valentino and Ramon Navarro – the truly smouldering sheikhs that used to kidnap the dainty blond heroines in the movies (before the coming of sound and colour sucked out the audiences’ souls and replaced them with 3-D glasses). The one thing all these heart-throbs of yesteryear had in common were eyes like flashing black diamonds, illuminated from within by the light of the moon. The second you stared into those limpid black pools of desire, you knew what was next on the menu. And it wasn’t called the blue plate special. It was called “Va Va Voom!” It was called the sort of sex that was better dreamed about than displayed on the screen. It was called, “Oh, fuck! I wish (pant pant pant) he would leap out of the screen on his white charger and take me right here on the cinema floor on top of the spilled popcorn and candy-wrappers!”

Never mind that – in the case of those smouldering Sheikhs – once they had kidnapped the fair damsel (usually a simpering blond with a palpitating heart such as Agnes Ayers) they took her back to live in their mother’s tent in the oasis – where she was doomed to spend the rest of her life beating the carpets and hanging out the wash and churning out babies every week and a half. But the movies never showed that side of things – and wouldn’t until the 1960s and Ken Loach and ‘Poor Cow’.

Needless to say, Rudolf Valentino and his ilk cut a wide berth around the likes of Theda Bara, for she was a temptress who would have eaten him for breakfast and taken him home to live in the brothel with her mother, where he would have had to do a great many other things besides scrubbing the floors. In fact, poor ol’ Rudolph did finally come a cropper with a certain Alla Nazimova. And the upshot was that he died. In other words, his eyes stopped flashing. And this only shows that you should never stray from the profile assigned you by the computer. And it also proves that once your eyes stop flashing, you might as well be the parking attendant. Whereas, if you’ve got pits to die for you can always climb out of your coffin and become an unspeakably pitiless vampire.

Let me just add this before we move on. Yes, Rudolf Valentino died. And he died when he was still gorgeous and still had a glimmer of flashing, smouldering eyes that burned like charcoals; however, if he hadn’t died in tragic circumstances and prematurely, no one would remember him. You see, flashing eyes can only take you so far! What they need to ensure immortality is a breath of scandal and a really great funeral with women in black hurling themselves on to the coffin. Otherwise, as soon as you’re buried you’re yesterday’s news and your family won’t be able to make any money from the sale of your relics. Just look at poor old Ramon ‘Who’s he’ Navarro. He was a sheikh with flashing eyes just a rung on the ladder below Valentino. But nobody remembers him. And the reason no one does is that he didn’t die a tragic death, did he? Well, actually he did, but by the time he was brutally murdered, he was just an old, washed-up has-been who’d used up all his money buying rent-boys. Needless to say, not a single woman swathed in black and festooned with jet even attended his funeral, much less swooned over his coffin. And do you know why? Because by the time he was dead, his flashing eyes were more like week-old dead slugs. And nobody even knew or cared whether he had any pits at all.

Believe me when I say that the woods are full of screen sirens and pop idols with flashing eyes who forgot to die when they should have. But as I said before, you’ve got to keep with the program! For eyes dry up, and once the light has gone out of them, they might just as well have had invisible and boring grey-blue eyes just like mine. And after a point, not even fluorescent contact lenses and spot lights will bring them to life again.

Now, there are some – not many – heart-throbs who are lumbered with invisible eyes. And sometimes they even have boring invisible pale skin and hair the colour of mouse turds. In fact, some of them are even cursed with colouring like mine. In other words, whole-body invisibility. Such people were invariably called ‘Minger’ in school – unless, of course, they were cursed with even the slightest hint of salmon pink in their hair (and especially when that hair was growing on a pair of exuberantly forested milk-white legs), in which case they were stuck with the ‘Ginger’ label. And sometimes if you had both things going for you at the same time you really did develop an issue with your parents; in other words, why didn’t they think to match their colour-charts before ‘doing it’? I almost fitted into that category, but then I shaved my leg-hair and it grew back a nice, flat mousey brown. Just think, I just missed out on rejoicing in that wonderful double-barrelled nickname of ‘Ginger-Minger’ (and no, it is not pronounced ‘jinjer-minjer’).

Yes, I admit there are a few career paths open to us mingers and ginger-mingers. I mean, there are certainly job openings galore if what you crave is an action-packed life as an insurance adjuster or an assistant manager in Walmart or even one of the valued associates at Disney World who lives inside a Mickey Mouse costume. But if you have your heart set on being a professional childminder or lollypop man, forget it. Everyone will look at you and know you are both a paedophile and a psychopathic killer. And very possibly a serial rapist, as well – because as everybody knows – ginger-mingers (unlike Latin lovers with flashing eyes) are always lacking in that certain ‘department’ located in their Y-fronts. Using the same logic, ginger-mingers are – it goes without saying – psychopaths. Or at least neurotic whiners who should be placed on the sex-offenders list on the day of their birth.

This is why every single mass-murderer and serial rapist you see in the movies has got those horrible, washed-out, invisible greyish-blue eyes. And the actors portraying them can never get any other type of role, which makes some of them so depressed that they go on to become paedophiles in real life.

But as I was about to say before I interrupted myself, there are certain invisibly pale and boring would-be heart-throbs (the original models for the stealth bomber) who manage to become heart-throbs in spite of the fact that nobody ever manages to see them. And do you know why? Because of their armpits. Because if they have great armpits, nobody ever looks at their boring and invisible eyes or at their washed-out complexions or at their lank and greasy ‘just-this-side-of-gingery’, dirty-looking hair.

As I said before, armpits are the windows to the soul. Gaze into a perfect armpit and you are sucked into a forest of delights. You become a child again, fantasizing about a secret garden outside your bedroom window. Armpits as they should be are the true objects of desire that have inspired every poet from Ovid to Byron to Keats and Brooke, and right down to the present day. And whenever in a sacred text, the Garden of Eden is mentioned, what they are describing is the most perfect, the most sublime and most glorious armpit ever created.

There are certain thespians that have based their entire careers on the beauty and the purity-of-line of their armpits. One example that springs to mind is an American film actor named Ethan Hawke. Now, as far as I know he is a quite a decent actor. And as far as I know he is even fairly attractive to look at. But what I do know is that the camera is in love with his armpits. At least that used to be the case. But, of course, he is older now, which means his armpits might not so alluring. And he might have even let them go to pot. If so, this is undoubtedly the reason we don’t see as many of his films as we used to. For in the olden days, when his armpits were in their prime and you simply wanted to bury yourself in their depths, there would come a moment in each and every one of his movies when he would be wearing a singlet or a similar garment. At the climax of this moment, the lights would focus on his torso, and Ethan Hawke would raise his arms and place his hands in back of his head. And his perfectly sculpted and contoured armpits would make your heart explode. Never before or since have there been armpit ‘moments’ to equal these. And I still dream about them. And as for his eyes, I do not have a clue what colour they were. For in every single film he made, it was all about his armpits.

One of the great recent armpit movies was ‘Benjamin Button’ starring Brad Pitt. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but the way the filmmakers tracked the shifting ages of the protagonist was through the shifting character of his armpits. And that means, of course, through the shifting nature not only of the contours, but of his armpit hair. For as the character got younger, so his armpits became more beautiful – until you got to the point when he was a teenager, and the sheer loveliness of his fragrant gardens was almost heartbreaking. And if you don’t believe me, rent the move and see for yourself.

Now I admit I am neglecting women’s armpits (and God only knows there are more of those than there are stars in the sky – except in Muslim countries, where they don’t have any). And I admit they do have their attractions. Mostly razor-burns or white skid marks from using the wrong deodorants. And I will never deny having certain prejudices where armpits are concerned. However – and, yes, there is always a however – a perfect armpit is only perfect on a tight-knit body and for a certain number of years. For the most part – setting aside the inevitable beaches where all the wrong sorts of armpits are on display from both sexes – men, after a certain age – which means the age when their muscles start to turn to flab and their bodies are best seen after twilight and covered in a boiler suit – tend not to flaunt their armpits in public quite as much as they did when they had something that was worth flaunting. Unless, of course, we are talking about those members of the human race who sit on their barstools attired in cut offs and string vests, or about certain naturists who leave their vanity in the locker with their clothing; but if they are happy then so am I. And then there are those who have never been introduced to soap. In which case, they have coal pits. And as we all know, you venture into a coal pit at your own risk.

Men – with certain well-known exceptions – namely the aforementioned bar stool sitters and those who stopped developing after their high school football careers had ended – do have a certain over-wheening vanity when it comes to their bodies. And especially where their armpits are concerned (we will deal with stomachs at a later date).

Woman, on the hand, while they be as vain as men in many areas, have a blind spot when it comes to their armpits. It is as simple as that. They don’t seem to understand that a young, firm and succulent armpit can be displayed without shame. However, does that mean they should exhibit their nakedness and their razor-burns whenever they brush their hair back from their eyes? In fact, an armpit – which is after all, a sexual organ – should never be flaunted; it should be discovered. However, many women – from the moment they dress themselves in sleeveless tops – do nothing but flaunt their armpits. In fact, very often one sees much more of their armpits than ones does of their faces. How sad it is that they don’t stop pumping Botox into their phizogs, thus making them resemble weather balloons; after all, the only things they are displaying to the gathered assembly are a set of armpits that are – by then – well-past their sell-by date. And there is nothing Botox can do about them.

I won’t go so far as saying it’s a fetish, but if I had a choice between burying my face in a freshly sweating armpit (and notice I used a form of the word ‘fresh’) and a man’s groin (equally fresh, it goes without saying) I would opt for the armpit every time.

I admit that my behaviour can at times border on the embarrassing. For if I am with a man whose armpits are symphonies of delight, I simply cannot concentrate on anything he says. This was – alas – true of the last two horse-trainers I worked under. Both of them were in their mid-thirties, and both – it goes without saying – were extremely fit. Both had magnificently toned torsos… and both of them had the most outrageously succulent armpits I had seen in years. And, no, I never saw either of them shirtless; after all, we were occupied with other things – such as schooling jumpers. But when the weather was warm, both would wear short-sleeves shirts. And I almost could not contain myself. It was pure eroticism of the highest order. All I can say is it’s a good thing for me that it is armpits that mesmerise me. After all, if you are working with a straight man and insist on drooling at his crotch, he will eventually get slightly suspicious. But with armpits you are safe. You can stare at them for days and all your co-worker will think is that you are concentrating on what he is saying. And looking thoughtful. Of course, now that I’ve blown my cover by writing this, every man I know will go round with his arms strapped to his waist. Just to spite me.

What else can I say about armpits? Naturally, they should be clean. Yes, the armpit owner might want to use a small amount of anti-perspirent, but don’t glob it on. And don’t put it on before sex – unless, of course, the thought of my scrubbing your pits with a Brillo pad is what yanks your chain. And if you’ve got a rainforest denser that the entire Amazon delta you might want to check it now and then for borrowing rodents or for one of the lost tribes of Israel. And if you sweat profusely and have been working all day in the blistering heat, please don’t shove your pits into my face unless you want to get kneed. The smell of fresh sweat is one thing; the rancid stench of the abattoir is quite another.

And please, men and women and Walmart shoppers, remember the following politically incorrect statement: after anyone has gained a certain amount of weight (yes, that’s what I said), an armpit ceases to be an armpit and becomes something that might as well be two sweaty halves of a hamburger bun with crab-grass or poppy-seeds in the middle. Now, there is nothing wrong in this; we all have weight problems at some point in our lives. Just don’t persist in thinking that what was at one time an erogenous zone is still one of your main attractions. It is not. It’s like trying to pass off Gary Glitter as the star of ‘Glitter’. And for God’s sake, if you have put on a few tonnes and you do lose your pits, don’t go on pretending you still have them. You won’t fool anyone. And while I may still stare at them, it won’t be from lust, but because I will be trying to figure out if a pit actually existed there at one time, or if you were simply born with a lump of bread dough proofing under each arm.

Ah! Pits, glorious pits, pits of the evening, beautiful pits. Pits are like the sweetest, rarest fragrance. Know the power of your pits! Even if they are as clean and as pristine as a midsummer’s morn, don’t just go shoving them into a person’s face – not even a person like me, who loves a good pit to distraction. A pit that is sublime must be approached like an exotic perfume or a very, very fine wine. Or an exquisite bouillabaisse on which you are planning to dine.

Remember, with a pit that is perfect and with a person like you that knows what to do with a perfect pit, it is not a quick bump or grind or a “howdy do, ma’am, I hope you don’t mind” but a veritable feast of the senses. So give each pit an hour, or perhaps even two, and you’ll break down all their owner’s defences.

I am so sick and tired of smelly people. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, and I’m certainly not discriminating against those who have a medical condition. And I’m bloody well not complaining about anyone who is not in a position to wash. For whatever reason. But maybe I am. I have lived in a lot of places on this benighted earth of ours, including many sinkholes where there has been practically no water to speak of, as well as in places where the only sources of water have been near open drains. But you know something? The fewer facilities people seem to have, the harder they work to keep themselves clean. To put it this way, in most of the worst favelas in the world there is not a lot of body odour. I am not generalising, I’m simply stating the reality as experienced through my own olfactory organs.

Now, I have crossed large tracks of desert by camel and on horseback, and few were the times when the Taureg or Bedouin guides were even as smelly as I. They simply knew how to keep themselves clean. And, yes, religion did have its part to play, for in their world-view a man must wash himself before each of the five daily prayers. And if there is no water with which he can cleanse himself, he will use sand. And the sand in the desert is nothing if not clean – for it is swept and polished by the winds ever moment of its life. Remember this: O! Ye Westerners! There is nothing dirty about dirt except what we ourselves put into it. The rest is in our minds.

The Arab mania for personal hygiene has not gone unnoticed by travellers over the centuries who have been ‘scandalised’ by the amount of water being ‘wasted’; to them survival was and is more important than having a clean bottom and well-trimmed toenails. Call it a conflict of cultures. For the guides to which I was referring – good Muslims all – it was to their God that they prayed, and it was for their God that that they washed themselves clean. On the other hand, those being guided by these nomads of the desert had a completely opposite point of view. To hell with how filthy you were; you needed the water for drinking. And it was also for the animals that carried you. But as far as the latter complaint was concerned, the guides would simply shrug their shoulders and look amused. For God would take care of the camels and horses. Hadn’t He provided wells in places no European could find but of which they themselves were aware. And as for the survival of the guides themselves – and even for their European tourists (for that matter) – “Insh’Allah.”

It is very bizarre, is it not; two Gods who are supposedly one God, even though the fact that some people can’t get it through their thick heads that one of these one Gods – the one they call ‘Allah’ – is really the same God as the other God, the one they call ‘God’ – the only difference being that ‘Allah’ means ‘God’ in Arabic, whereas ‘God’ means ‘God’ in English. But, of course, he’s called something else in Judaism, but since as far as I know it’s not a name that can be mentioned – or even written down where somebody can see what it is actually spelled like, I’m not going to get involved. Let us just say that this third God, which is really the same one God as the other two Gods, is not called ‘Jehovah’. It only sounds like it, which is why it is often written that way in certain Bibles that don’t spell anything the same way as other Bibles do. It’s called doing your own thing. And in the words of many a lawmaker in certain countries who has tried to have English declared the ‘official’ language, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us!”

Is it any wonder that God switches off his hearing aid when we talk to Him? After all, with so many people yelling at Him and calling him so many different names, what is a God to do? He gets even.

And do you want to know how he gets even? Well, first of all He creates us in His own image, or He doesn’t in the two cases where He doesn’t have any image of Himself to use as a model – in which case, He doesn’t create us to look like anything at all. In other words, in two out of the three cases, he wings it. And when He doesn’t like the result, he invents the burkha.

So far, so good. Are you still with me?

What He does next – in fact, I believe all three of Him does it – is to pronounced Himself satisfied. Or at least He does in two out of the three cases, for in the third case he apparently got tired of repeating Himself and simply skipped all that redundant ‘patting Himself on the back’ nonsense and went straight to the meat of the matter. You know, where He starts to lecture us on the fact that women were put on earth to be virgins forever and ever, or at least until a man chooses to get tired of little boys and decides to marry them and take them home to keep house for his mother? And to beat the carpets on the balcony and scrub the floors and hang out the wash? And of course, having been de-virginised, the wife is no longer a virgin but only used merchandise, so she might as well do something to earn her keep by churning out at least one baby per week. And if she cannot even manage that, then her poor husband will have to make do with marrying as many wives as there are stars in the sky. And he will continue on doing this until he has used up all the virgins on the planet. And when they are all used up, and he still hasn’t had a really first-class de-virginising experience, he is forced to start marrying his brother’s widows. After all, he knows his brother had forgotten to fill his Viagra prescription. And hence, there’s a chance his brother’s wives might be virgins after all. But, as even un-de-virginised de-virginised used virgins are wont to be, they are still like used cars. In other words, there’s dog shit on the retreads. This means they have betrayed him and he is, therefore, obliged to stone them for pretending to be virgins even though they were virgins but had been diddled once or twice by his brother before he had died of a surfeit of figs. For having once been diddled, these pseudo-virgins knew what the company of a man was like. So he didn’t have a choice, did he? It was stoning or nothing – after all, there is an ‘Only Virgins Allowed’ policy in heaven, and by this time she’s old enough to nag. Anyway, after he has finished with that task, he then proceeds to the widows and orphans of the village. Of course, most of those widows – based on the fact that they will have had children – will have been de-virginised at some point or other. And by a man who was not he. Sadly, that will mean they are probably the most soiled of all de-virginised ex-virgins, and need to be stoned as well. Fortunately for him, the ten year old sons of the defiled, de-virginised widows (the ones who have just been stoned for not being virgins when they seduced him into marriage), will be virgins themselves. If you know what I mean. And so, it will end happily for everyone. As they say, “Amen.” And so endeth the first lesson, the one in which the third God who was the one God, skipped the part about being satisfied.

And now, let us proceed to the other two Gods who were the one God, but who had been satisfied. On the whole, these two Gods of the one God felt they hadn’t done too bad a job. That is, considering the calibre of their workers and the fact that the clay that had been given had already been used once in the studio of Michelangelo (and we all know what that means – it had been used for something quite different than that for which God had originally intended clay to be used). However, in case of one of the Gods of the one God – the one who was camera shy like the one God of the one God who had glossed over the bit about being satisfied – He had decided in a fit of pique (possibly because His wife had slipped with her scissors and had not only rounded the edges of his beard but had chopped off His foreskin) that He wouldn’t use Himself as a model at all and instead, He would make His offspring in the image of something called an ‘Isaac’ (which was the name His had given to His pet baby goat).

Needless to say, this version of the story ended in guilt and in great gnashing of the teeth and rending of the hair. For this particular one God of the one God had had a dream. Only, not having a picture of Himself to use as a reference, this particular God of the one God couldn’t be sure if it was about Himself or about someone else – perhaps even about a fourth God of the one God that nobody had heard about yet. And so He went over to the house of one of the many identical men with long beards (for those were before the days when Michelangelo was able to paint men with different faces). He commanded this man with the beard to go out and sacrifice Isaac. Little did he realise that the word ‘Isaac’ no longer meant ‘goat’, but instead was the name of the old man-with-the-beard’s first-born son. But being that the old man had had personal experience with what happens when you don’t do what any of the one Gods want you to do (after all, he had been in Sodom shopping for lentils and had had to flee for his life), he said, “Why the Hell not. I’m only five thousand years old – I can always make another son. And even a spare.” And so he grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck and took him up on top of a hill and tied him to a burning bush. Now, because the burning bush cast the only light for miles around, this particular one God among the one God saw what the old man with the beard had done. And he was annoyed. “Holy fuck,” he said. “Not only have I created a whole bunch of ugly people, but I have created the first idiot as well.” And so what He did was run up the hill after the old man with the beard, but He was too late. For He had been wearing a pair of too-large Crocs and had gotten a thorn stuck between His rock and his hard place. And since it hurt like Hell and He was forced to change out of His Crocs and into a pair of cheap Chinese flip-flops, he got to the burning bush just as the old man had sliced off Isaac’s head with a carving knife. Now, God was not happy about this, and he said some very unkind words to the old man with a beard and ordered him and all his descendants to be bowed down with guilt and bad suffering and an eternity of eating matzoh-ball soup. But then, after He had sent the old man with the beard away with his head cast down, and with the head of his son on his head – shining like a beacon in the darkness – this particular one God of the one God remembered that since nobody knew what anybody looked like – having been created in the image of Him that didn’t have a graven image, no one else would know the difference between a he-goat and the son of the old man with the beard. So He pretended that the goat – who was still alive and munching happily on the burning bush – was really the son of the old man and that the son with the shining head was really the goat. After all, they were both named Isaac.

And so this particular episode ended reasonably satisfactorily. Except of course, this one God of the only God had already told the old man with the beard to go forth and multiply and fill the earth with people with shame and guilt and misery in their hearts. And since the old man with the beard had already fulfilled his part of the bargain, this particular one God of the one God decided that – to make up for it – the least He could do was to make all His sons ‘doctors’.

Now, the third only God of the only God looked down on everything the parts of Himself had created and He was sore afraid. And He decided that He did not want to make those particular mistakes again.

And so what He did was command that He should be visible after all. Now, He really was quite an impressive-looking God – at least according to the preliminary sketches carried out by Michelangelo.

Anyway, unlike the other two Gods of the one God, this particular one God of the one God actually knew what He looked like. Therefore, He had it in mind to create some really great looking people. No beards for a start. And beautiful strong chins. Long muscular necks. Flashing eyes with long lashes. And bodies so beautiful that this one God of the one God decided to invent the gym so that the beautiful bodies wouldn’t end up looking like the old man with the beard. And He also commissioned Michelangelo to carve a statue of what the perfect man should look like. Except, of course, when the statue was being delivered, one of the postal employees tried to push it through the letter box without waiting for the butler to answer the door. Sadly, the original willy – which looked and sounded rather like a neon inflated pig’s bladder singing Verdi’s ‘Anvil Chorus’ – was knocked off and smashed to pieces. And since Michelangelo’ assistant only had a teeny tiny piece of marble in his pocket, he glued it on in its place.

This particular God of the one God then sat down and had a good think. And what He came up with was this: since, in His estimation, He had done such a splendid job (even taking into account the ‘willy business’), why didn’t He relax and make life a whole lot easier for Himself by creating two more parts to Himself. A son and a Holy Ghost. After all, He was lonely, being the only God of the one God to have a face to look at. But then He started to worry and fret. What if people – who after all had very small heads without very much room for actual brains – started to confuse Him with the other two Gods of the one God.

“I know!” he said. “I shall make all of us one Gods of the one God hate each other. And since the people are as stupid as they are, they will forget that we are all the same God – only that one of us has an English name, one of us has an Arabic name, and one of us doesn’t have any name at all – and they will get down to the business of slaughtering each other. Possibly even until the end of time – which would save Us (the one God of the one God) from having to come up with any more stupid ideas.”

And it worked. And that is why the world is as it is today.

But let’s get back to the question of cleanliness. From the beginning all of the three Gods in the one God had difficulties when it came to His relationships with women. After all, He may have been the one God in the one God (plus the Son and the Holy Ghost in one case) but He was still a man. He suffered from erectile dysfunction. He was obsessed with size (having had to altar his design specifications after the business with the statue of the ‘perfect man’). He suffered from crotch rot. He suffered from unsightly boils. He suffered from halitosis. He had corns from wearing ill-fitting Crocs. He had liver spots. And he had a much younger wife who was attractive to other Gods much more attractive than He. And He simply couldn’t take the embarrassment. After all, what was the use of being the one God, if you were not perfect? And the thing is, women were not afraid to tell Him He was not perfect!

He looked at His wife, who was busily peeling grapes for Adonis, and He said to Himself under His breath, “Party time is over!

He went straight into His study; He looked through His book of curses until He found just what He was looking for: a curse to end all curses. And it was so nasty He simply called it The Curse.